Friday, July 03, 2009

Berusky is a "free logic game". It's a puzzle game of Sokoban-like gameplay with a few extra twists. You have control of up to 5 bugs, and you must collect 5 silver keys on each level before you can exit it. You can push explosives into barrels, and destroy boulders with pick axes that you collect. Throw in one-way gates, coloured gates and coloured keys, and gates for specific colour bugs and there's a lot of potential obstacles and some wickedly tricky levels.

The graphics are nice. There's no music. The game has not been fully translated into English, so some of the level hints (well, most of them) are appearing in Czech(?). And it's bloody hard. As hard as Fish Fillets (Free Gamer review), if not harder. (Interestingly, Fish Fillets is also Czech produced.) I couldn't work out how to beat *the first level on intermediate or the 3rd level on easy. The interface outside of the game isn't that great - using passwords for levels which are easy to forget to note down - it could really do with a Fish Fillets style map.

Update: Ok the first level on intermediate wasn't that hard, I was just being a bit daft... I was looking for a complex solution when (if you look at the screenshot) there was a simple way to finish the level.

Gondola looks curious. A PyWeek game, "Gondola is the ultimate shipping, shape sorting, barge unloading game of all time. Get the right shapes to the right places to score. But be warned: there are only a limited number of islands to build on and longer cables are expensive! Sort wisely to minimize loss." It sounds intriguing and original but I couldn't run it due to some idiotic Linux issues.

Overgod

The other day I stumbled across a game I'd previously enjoyed but forgotten, Overgod. It's a good, solid shoot 'em up which plays well and has polished albeit simple abtract graphics.

Digging a bit, I see that Overgod (2008) is an evolution of Lacewing (2006), which features similar gameplay but the enemies and levels tend to be a bit more basic and is not quite as polished.